


The Howling Moon

by stardropdream



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the daylight hours, Fuuma hunts Kamui. In the midnight hours, Kamui hunts Fuuma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Howling Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ December 18, 2010.
> 
> Holiday fic for anasaurus! Her request was "Fuuma/Kamui - on differences between night and day."

During the daylight hours, Fuuma hunts him. He darts and dives, dipping ever closer. Kamui blocks, ducks—moves, always moving. Their bodies come together only for the sake of pushing away. To get away, to keep away—to fight for survival, to fight for no other reason. This is what Kamui thinks to himself. Fuuma is always following after him, reaching for him, tugging him closer, shifting grip on his wrists, twisting, always twisting. Their shadows mesh together, their legs tangle in those brief moments when Fuuma manages to pin him, smiling as wide as the sky. He breathes out, harshly, loud and pathetically human—achingly close, the hot breath of a human’s lifeline. He can hear the blood singing in his veins. Against his back, against his ear—hot breath. Kamui forgets to breathe himself sometimes, in his quest to get away, to stay far away.  
  
The air tastes of sulfur and is heavy with salt, the grit on the floor skidding their footsteps as they dart behind the stones and dead bodies, Kamui’s crossbow abandoned in favor of movement—evading Fuuma as the bullets soar. He hisses out quietly, but Fuuma is all smiles as always. He even manages to say a few words around the breathless rush of air from his lungs when Kamui digs his heel into his chest and sends him flying backwards.  
  
The words are something like, “Aren’t you pretty?”  
  
But it is impossible to know for sure, and Kamui does not wish to hear such words—not now, not ever. He hurls himself to Fuuma to launch his feet into his gut, to steal his air, and dart away again. Freedom. He can taste it. He longs for it—freedom from this world, freedom from the salt and sulfur, freedom from the hopeless loss he feels, when he is alone and without his brother. His fingers curl around Fuuma’s jaw line, traces it before he forces his face away, gasping out a quiet curse as Fuuma laughs, hot breath against the curve of his wrist as Kamui shifts away, flashes away as quickly as the desert sunshine.   
  
And Fuuma is always too close, always smiling too much. His smile, tensed around the edges—these things he has finally begun to notice, after so many years—that seems to suggest he knows too much and yet not enough to begin with. And Kamui does not wish to uncover all the rough pieces, to understand this puzzle. Ignorance—he craves the ignorance.   
  
The hand that grabs Kamui’s wrist is roughened by the acid and the sandstorms, and Fuuma twists his wrist mercilessly behind Kamui’s back. Kamui does not cry out, but his eyes narrow and for one brief moment—his eyes flash molten gold.  
  
“Caught you,” Fuuma says, quietly, into his ear, and his voice is a wash of cold in a dusty, desert land.   
  
During the daylight hours, Kamui is the hunted. And Fuuma always catches him.   
  
“It can’t be helped, you know,” Fuuma breathes into his hair, hot breath ghosting over the shell of Kamui’s ear. “I’m like your shadow.”   
  
Kamui’s eyes slide to half-mast and he gives Fuuma a steady gaze, trying to jerk himself away from Fuuma—but Fuuma’s grip is as tight and unrelenting as his smile. Kamui does not give up, but he does rest—waiting for his chance to escape.   
  
“Aren’t you going to ask me how?” Fuuma asks with a laugh.  
  
Kamui’s eyes narrow further, and he tips his chin back as he feels Fuuma’s fingers curl against his neck, deceptively soft. They brush down the length of his throat, follows the lines of muscles, the knob of an adam’s apple, the pound of a pulse where neck meets jaw. Fuuma leans in closer, and his breath ghosts against his jaw for half a moment, and their eyes lock—gold on smiling brown.   
  
“Ah,” Fuuma breathes, and when he speaks, his lips brush along the line of Kamui’s jaw. Kamui forgets to jerk his face away. “You do wonder, don’t you?”   
  
Kamui doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of asking, so he remains quiet, even as he feels the cold, relentless barrel of a gun press against the underside of his chin. He closes his eyes, feels his nostrils flare as he sucks in a steadying breath.   
  
“You can’t be rid of your shadow, you know,” Fuuma whispers. “A shadow,” he says with a laugh, “Always in front of you or behind you. You can’t run away from it.”   
  
Kamui does speak this time, quietly, a deadly hiss, “Only at night.”   
  
Fuuma laughs again, and whispers his agreement: “Only at night.”   
  
In the daylight hours, when the sun beat its heavy beams down onto the unrelenting wasteland, Fuuma had his control. He hunts Kamui, and he always catches him. But in the night, when the moon rose—it changes. In the night, Kamui hunts Fuuma.   
  
He only dares to leave the water’s side at night, sometimes in the safety of the acid rain, sometimes in the unprotected Tokyo night. But he does dare to leave, and he always hunts down that man—the only one to stand a chance against him, the only human who could lose his blood and survive. And Kamui is so hungry.   
  
When he finds Fuuma, he kicks hard enough to leave a bruise as dark as the shadows cast by the setting moon. The moonlight reflects off Kamui’s eyes—blue, ice—and into his hair, and he has only to kick away Fuuma’s gun for the man to smile, blinded in the dark, and say,   
  
“I’d wondered when you’d come here.”   
  
Kamui hates to think he has become predictable, so instead of attacking him for such words, he darts away into the shadows.   
  
Fuuma stands—appears nonchalant, but it is deception. He is on guard, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light, to search for a shadow or glimmer of the vampire in the darkness. The human is not properly frightened—Kamui does not know if he is foolish or brave.   
  
He falls down upon him from the ceiling, knocks Fuuma to the ground so his glasses go skidding away and he has no time to reach for his knife before Kamui has pinned him, knee to his solar plexus, face close to his own. He hears the race of his heartbeat. It only makes him hungrier.   
  
His teeth drag across his chest. He tastes his beating heart. His fingers drag across skin, claws scraping until all he can taste and smell is red.   
  
Fuuma’s breathing is shallow, but not from fear—from something else.   
  
“You can always just ask,” Fuuma says, voice hushed.  
  
Kamui doesn’t answer, though his nose twitches at that, his tongue lapping at the dip of collarbone, where some blood has collected. Fuuma leans back with a sigh, staring up at the sky and his heart racing beneath Kamui’s fangs. How easy it would be to dig into his chest and pull it out, but it would be such a waste of blood. That is what Kamui tells himself. He drinks what he needs, but not to excess.   
  
When he thinks he has had enough, he pulls away, thumbing at his own mouth, searching for any blood he may have missed.   
  
Fuuma is watching him, but saying nothing.   
  
“Are you really like a shadow?” Kamui repeats, and doesn’t quite smile though the temptation is there. He lets his eyes glow in the dim lighting, lets Fuuma feel, for one brief moment, that he has lost complete and utter control. “Or do you forget,” he almost purrs, pinning Fuuma’s wrists above his head, and does smirk this time when he says, “a shadow can only be in front or behind, but never on top.”   
  
And he ducks his head and catches Fuuma’s mouth, and for a brief moment he is kissing him before his teeth dig into the flesh of his lips and tastes the copper grit of blood around the soft, satisfying sound of Fuuma’s gasp.


End file.
